Frequently Asked Questions

Everyone is different. When two people come together, there is already diversity.

Diversity can be any attribute that makes us different from one another. Diversity is both attributive and cognitive, and can refer to differences based on cultural heritage, gender, age, language, religion, disability and sexual orientation, and to many more dimensions such as education, occupation, tenure, personality, socioeconomic status, marital or parental status, and so on. The list is almost endless!

We have worked since 2015 to qualify and quantify the metrics that best capture diversity for any organisation. We regularly review and conduct research in order to ensure Atlas captures key diversity, both cultural and demographic. We emphasise cultural diversity, demographic diversity and intersectionality in order to provide nuanced, considered and useful insights in diversity results.

The data is stored in accordance with our privacy policy. Click to read: privacy policy.

Each page of the Atlas survey has an SSL certificate. Our web servers are located in highly secured domains where security is guaranteed. All website data is backed up on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. The integrity and availability of any data on Atlas is our highest priority, and all data is encrypted in transit and at rest. All personal data is protected in line with any or all statutory authorities in any country, state or jurisdiction in which the survey is deployed, including but not limited to GDPR (EU).

We use the UN database of countries and follow the UN’s classification of countries and dependent territories. The criteria for the selection of countries listed in Diversity Atlas can be categorised as:

• A full member of the United Nations
• UN Non-Member Permanent Observer States
• Members of specialized agencies of the UN
• Countries connected to a full member and in the process of being decolonized
• Islands associated with a Full Member State – e.g, Christmas Island and Norfolk Island are part of Australia.
• Non Self-Governing Territories

Or a region/ overseas territory connected to a country which is a full member of the UN such as the following:

• Overseas Territories/Collectivity/Departments/Regions of France
• Overseas Territories/Department of Britain
• Constituent Country
• Unincorporated Territories of the US & Commonwealth
• Constituent State/Country – e.g, Antigua is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
• Associated State

We also list countries that fulfil the following three criteria:

• Recognised by at least two UN full member states.
• Are self-governing
• Have their own official currency, or utilise a currency from a major multi-lateral movement or a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Our list is a modified version of lists published by institutions including Ethnologue, Linguasphere and AIATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies) database of languages and dialects. These have been edited and expanded by the Atlas Anthrodata team. As with all our databases, this is a living database and if we have missed any languages, please do get in touch. It is through feedback from participants we added Dothraki!

Worldview is the term we use to encompass both secular and religious beliefs. We acknowledge that the term ‘worldview’ can have a variety of meanings, and in this context, we draw from the sociology of religion, and its use in reference to both religious and non-religious worldviews.  We use the term ‘worldview’ to refer to profound questions such as those about the nature of reality. While religious traditions have historically been the dominant voices in answering these questions, there are of course spiritual, folk, non-religious, and/or secular frameworks from which people derive meaning. For instance, Australia’s Census has shown a significant shift in how Australians identify in terms of their beliefs, and there has been a shift towards ‘No religion’ which includes secular beliefs, new age religious beliefs, atheism and the like.

Based on these trends in a global and ever-changing religious demographic and in line with academic practice, we have used the term ‘worldview’ and have worked to formulate a question that is inclusive to people regardless of their beliefs and invites all users to participate.

We even have Jedi!

Note: We have been asked to include political or socio-political movements into our Worldview datasets, such as ‘Neo-Marxist’ and ‘Conservative’ but thus far we have resisted. This is because we believe that the spirit of the query is to do with one’s perception of reality, not one’s perception of economic or political structures.

Because it is a part of how culture is defined. Religions, spiritual expressions, indigenous traditions, and other secular worldviews shape our values, attitudes, behaviours and how we interact with others.

An individual may hold multiple positions on religion/worldview. For example, an individual may have been raised within a religious tradition and retain its social practices, but they may have developed deeper commitments to other belief systems. Furthermore, an individual may be raised in a multi religious household, and follow different traditions. We provide the option to list up to three worldviews/religions.

Typologies of religious hierarchies are complex because they consider a range of social, organisational and belief (spiritual/existential) factors. We use an (up to) three-tiered structure to classify religious groups which allows users to precisely specify their religious affiliation, as the nuance of differing branches of any religious or spiritual movement are often quite pronounced.

At the top of the hierarchy sits the dominant category of what is, in the case of Christian religions for instance, the ‘church’, with sub-categories of each church listed within the database as well, should participants wish to take a ‘deeper dive’.

Note: We also have options such as ‘Self Defined Christian’, ‘Lapsed Christian’ and ‘Non-Religious Buddhist’ in our datasets.

Examples:

• Christian → Catholic → Roman Catholic
• Christian → Orthodox → Greek Orthodox
• Islam → Sunni → Hanafi
• Buddhist → Mahayana → Zen
• Hindu → Vaishnava → Smarta
• Spiritism → Afro Brazilian → Candomble
• Humanist → at present we do not have other branches or sub groups listed for humanism.

Know of any? Please get in touch!

The Worldviews / Religions Database has been compiled from various sources such as The Parliament of World Religions, United Religions Initiative, World Religions Database, Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, Religions for Peace, and has also been edited and curated by Atlas staff and individual consultants.  The database itself is a living, breathing entity and will forever be reviewed and updated. 

Your ancestors may have belonged to different cultures to you, but the influence of these cultures may still resonate. For us, we are interested just as much by where you came from as who you are now. The dataset contains almost 11,000 options – some are broad descriptors such as ‘European’ but many are very precise, such as the thousands of tribes and mobs around the world, people groups, ethnic groups and nations.

You can pick up to four.

Likewise, your sense of cultural belonging may differ from your ancestry, or you may have the same answer/s for both questions. You can select up to four cultures / people-groups that describe the culture to which you feel that you belong now.

One’s own ancestry or culture may only tell a part of your story. Perhaps you are married to someone from a different cultural heritage, or perhaps you have lived for some time and immersed yourself into another culture, or have devoted time to studying a culture and it has influenced your life, or simply wish to display allyship? Here is your chance to express this.

The database has drawn from a range of sources including Ethnologue, AIATSIS (The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies), the UN and also many years of ongoing research by various members and partners of Cultural Infusion. An important feature of the databases is the ongoing coding and grouping of data according to zones, relational aspect and, where possible, the flow of communities across the globe.

Some entries such as ‘Black British’ and ‘West German’ came about after feedback from our participants. If any new cultural group is brought to our attention, we ensure research is conducted, citations and references noted, and our panel of SME’s are in agreeance before they are added to our database. This most wonderful act of ‘citizen science’ quite often brings forth real-world cultural identities than western academia has thus far ignored or failed to include.

Our database is an ongoing work, representative of our lifetime commitment to Atlas becoming a repository for all data around languages, speech communities, worldviews/religions, cultural heritage and national identities, which will ultimately help us to understand the human journey to its fullest.

Our studies over many years have found that in different countries, cultural identity priorities may widely differ.  For instance, our studies in Pakistan show that religion was generally more important to participants than their nationality, whereas in France this was reversed. It occurred to us however that ‘identity’ is not always defined or prioritised by one’s cultural groups, and demographic and personal attributes such as gender, occupation, political affinities or their appearance may be of more importance to people than their specific people-group.  As such, we seek to find identity trends within cohorts, so that organisations may have insight into the real-world priorities of their team.  You can select up to three.

Our list of conditions does not come from a published database but was developed under advice from subject matter experts familiar with how conditions are understood and discussed among peoples who identify as living with such. As with all our databases, we review academic research, current practice and the lived experience of people in developing our databases.

We define ‘long term conditions’ as any condition that affects interactions, and this includes disabilities, medical conditions and even neutral states of being.

Disability is any self-reported personal, physical, mental or emotional condition that impacts a person’s life long term.  We use the term ‘disability’ rather than other nomenclatures for reasons best expressed by the Australian Network on Disability, who write on their website:

“Differently abled”, “people of all abilities”, “disAbility”, “diffAbled”, “special needs” and the like, are all euphemistic and can be considered patronising. While the intention is usually good, these phrases tend to fall into the trap of making people with disability out to be special or inspirational, just for living with disability.”

We do not conflate gender with the biological fact of sex, so we ask both. The recognition of Trans and Non-binary (for instance) enables participants to indicate their gender when it is neither male nor female. This is consistent with Cultural Infusion’s goal of capturing relevant data in statistically small categories.

Our drop down list was developed in consultation with advocacy groups, government agencies, our own research and suggestions made by customers that were in turn researched and verified with the assistance of our consultants.

In early trials conducted globally we discovered that these words caused confusion and/or debate, resulting in incomplete surveys.  Our aim is to maximise engagement.

Position Level refers to your position within the hierarchy of your organisation. The categories are provided by your administrators. It is important to capture your position level so that we can examine representation and sentiment across all levels, looking for opportunities to close silos of difference and work towards proportional representation of cultures and demographics.

We use the term appearance to refer to the grouping of people into broad categories based on differences in physical appearance. We have been asked previously, “Why not just put ‘race’?”  The answer to that is that ‘race’ has no proven basis in scientific fact.  That is not to say racism does not exist (it most certainly does) but historically, notions around the concept of ‘race’ have sadly been weaponised and have often formed the basis of racism – that is, the use of racial differences to establish a social hierarchy and system of power that privileges or advantages certain groups and unfairly disadvantages other groups. Race can be something that a person identifies with but it can also be an unnecessary or nefarious classification that is assigned to them by others.

We believe it’s important to ask survey respondents about their appearance because, unfortunately, it is still one of the principle causes of discrimination. Understanding an organisation’s composition in terms of appearance can allow it to shed light on potential discriminatory practices in the organisation.

“Colourism” is a global issue where perceptions of skin shade can influence social and economic opportunities. Depending on location and social and cultural norms, people may experience advantages or disadvantages based on how their skin shade is perceived.